Bedford gullies are a "huge problem" says councillor amid flooding across town - but council says it's "doing what it can"

A car driving through floodwater. Picture: Bedford Borough CouncilA car driving through floodwater. Picture: Bedford Borough Council
A car driving through floodwater. Picture: Bedford Borough Council
Bedford borough’s gullies are a “huge problem”, a councillor has claimed.

But he was told they are in a “much better state” than they have been for “many years”.

At last night’s Environment and Sustainable Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee (Thursday, September 26) councillor Jonathan Abbott (Lib Dems, Clapham and Oakley) issues with gully maintenance had been mentioned by residents.

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“Whilst I appreciate we’ve had unprecedented volumes of water, actually some of the gullies are still full of dirt and muck,” he said.

“What are we doing to get a programme in place to get these cleared because it is a huge problem.

“And the more rain we get the bigger this issue is going to become.”

Paul Pace, chief officer (environment) replied: “We are spending more than we’ve ever spent in this council doing the gully maintenance work.

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“The gullies are in a much better state than they ever have been for many years in this borough.

“And we will continue to put resources into this maintenance until we can get back on top of a bit of a backlog [that] we’ve had over a number of years where we’ve not had the resources in place.

“There are obviously issues with gullies and what would appear to be water not draining the way.

“But I can assure you on a lot of the occasions, not every occasion, but a lot of the occasions, it’s just due to the sheer amount of water that is in the system.

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“A lot of the systems are not just council systems, [they can be] Anglian Water’s.

“And a lot of the Anglian Water systems in parts of the borough are very old and often combined with sewer systems, or during these peak periods of flood, actually mix with the sewers as well.

“Any requests we get where we believe there are issues with our gullies we’ll try to deal with them as soon as possible.

“It is an ongoing feast at the moment, but I can assure this Committee and the residents of Bedford, we are doing what we can.

“The resources are there and we will keep plugging our way through them,” he said.

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